In
an excerpt from his new book, My Spiritual Journey, The Dalai Lama
shares his belief in the surprising power of laughter and smiles to
reach other people, even our enemies.
I Am a Professional Laugher
I
have been confronted with many difficulties throughout the course of my
life, and my country is going through a critical period. But I laugh
often, and my laughter is contagious. When people ask me how I find the
strength to laugh now, I reply that I am a professional laugher.
Laughing is a characteristic of the Tibetans, who are different in this
from the Japanese or the Indians. They are very cheerful, like the
Italians, rather than a little reserved, like the Germans or the
English.
My cheerfulness also comes from my family. I come from a
small village, not a big city, and our way of life is more jovial. We
are always amusing ourselves, teasing each other, joking. It’s our
habit.
To that is added, as I often say, the responsibility of
being realistic. Of course problems are there. But thinking only of the
negative aspect doesn’t help to find solutions and it destroys peace of
mind. Everything, though, is relative. You can see the positive side of
even the worst tragedies if you adopt a holistic perspective. If you
take the negative as absolute and definitive, however, you increase your
worries and anxiety, whereas by broadening the way you look at a
problem you understand what is bad about it, but you accept it. This
attitude comes to me, from my practice and from Buddhist philosophy,
which help me enormously.
Take
the loss of our country, for example. We are a stateless people, and we
must confront adversity along with many painful circumstances in Tibet
itself. Nevertheless, such experiences also bring many benefits.
As
for me, I’ve been homeless for half a century. But I have found a large
number of new homes throughout the vast world. If I had remained at the
Potala, I don’t think I would have had the chance to meet so many
personalities, so many heads of state in Asia, Taiwan, the United
States, and Europe, popes as well as many famous scientists and
economists.
The life of exile is an unfortunate life, but I have
always tried to cultivate a happy state of mind, appreciating the
opportunities this existence without a settled home, far from all
protocol, has offered me. This way I have been able to preserve my inner
peace.
I Love the Smile, Unique to Humans
If
we are content just to think that compassion, rationality, and patience
are good, that is not actually enough to develop these qualities.
Difficulties provide the occasion to put them into practice. Who can
make such occasions arise? Certainly not our friends, but rather our
enemies, for they are the ones who pose the most problems. So that we
truly want to progress on the path, we must regard our enemies as our
best teachers.
For whoever holds love and compassion in high
esteem, the practice of tolerance is essential, and it requires an
enemy. We must be grateful to our enemies, then, because they help us
best engender a serene mind! Anger and hatred are the real enemies that
we must confront and defeat, not the “enemies” who appear from time to
time in our lives.
Of course it is natural and right that we all
want to have friends. I often say jokingly that a truly selfish person
must be altruistic! You have to take care of others, of their
well-being, by helping them and serving them, to have even more friends
and make more smiles blossom. The result? When you yourself need help,
you will find all you need! On the other hand, if you neglect others’
happiness, you will be the loser in the long run. Is friendship born of
arguments, anger, jealousy, and unbridled competition? I don’t think so.
Only affection produces authentic friends.
In contemporary
materialistic society, if you have money and power you have the
impression of having a lot of friends. But they aren’t your friends;
they are the friends of your money and power. If you lose your wealth
and influence you will have trouble finding those people again.
Unfortunately,
so long as things are going well, we think we can get along by
ourselves. However, as our situation and health decline, we soon realize
how wrong we were. That is when we understand who really helps us. To
prepare ourselves for such a time, by making true friends who are useful
when we need them most, we must cultivate altruism.
As for me, I
always want more friends. I love smiles, and my wish is to see more
smiles, real smiles, for there are many kinds—sarcastic, artificial, or
diplomatic. Some smiles don’t arouse any satisfaction, and some even
engender suspicion or fear. An authentic smile, though, arouses an
authentic feeling of freshness, and I think the smile belongs only to
human beings. If we want those smiles, we must create the reasons that
make them appear.
Source:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/10/24/dalai-lama-on-laughter-and-compassion.html
